Saturday, April 02, 2005

Enta, woaw, now you're sending us the pics AND review of the Elysée Montmartre concert (Paris)???!!! I cannot believe it! Thanks is not strong enough! Hey! You, fans, enjoy first the review! Pics are following... Right under the review in French you will find a translation in English!!!!

Dearest Webbers and Webbettes*, ( hey you oldest fans, don’t you remember these old words?), I ‘ve just come back (very late indeed!) from a rock concert. You are in doubt? Well, I will try to convince you it was!!This evening, at the Elysee Montmartre, we had the privilege to hear an unique sound, and it will not happen many other times, I think (thanks Benoit for the great production!). Having said that, it seems it will be repeated in Russia in the month of May.... but I won’t be there!!!!As well as the usual line-up, yes indeed, two major artists of the British rock scene had come from England, for the fun, for the pleasure of playing with Rachid ( it was enough to see them grinning on stage to understand that). One of them should not be too much of a surprise for you, since he is Rachid’s accomplice: Steve Hillage (with his partner Miquette in the wings); but his celebrated guitar riffs added a special sound, mixed with the more familiar sounds of Noel Delphin.But the greatest surprise, was the presence throughout of ....... Brian Eno with his percussions, his synthesisers and his backing vocals that supported all the songs... He had actually worked on the lyrics as well!!!! And you had to see his expression to know he was not doing as if (what for anyway?) he was really having fun: he was taking an obvious pleasure.There was thus a very special rock sound, which I had never heard before in the good dozen of Rachid's concerts I attended recently. Everything was given the rock treatment, the bedouin sound of Bent Sahra, Habina, Medina...The tone was rock!!! And true: Rachid had to pass via the British scene to get his rocking license in France. Let's not forget that it was just one year ago that the director of a rock magazine that is well-known asked a journalist whether he could "guarantee" Rachid was a rocker before accepting to publish an article on him!!!The audience -numerous, warm- has danced from the start. A very “franco-french” audience: so Rachid convinced them to learn some new French words like "chouffe chouffe" (Shuf! Look!); "Safi , s-a-f-i" (pure…from the same family as Sufism).Then a homage and a another way to wink at the audience, thanks to Hakim’s friendly accompaniment on his mandolute, to a flamenco singer Camaròn; "this is in ancient Spanish which is called Arabic..."A few statements:“Let’s stop saying ole’ olé; they will think we’re talking of religion!”“I won’t cite the name of Bouteflika because we need to stop using bad words”

*webbeurs, webbeuses” is the way Rachid Taha vocally addressed the visitors of his former Universal Official Site;vieille façon avec laquelle Rachid saluait vocalement les visiteurs de son ancien site officiel!